Publications

Dealership Experiences and Outlooks on Selling, Leasing, and Servicing EVs

9/1/2024

Automotive dealers offer one of the most candid lenses into driver behavior and vehicle purchasing habits. This report highlights prominent observations from seven automotive dealers pertaining to customer electric vehicle (EV) purchases, elucidating the motivating factors behind customer decision-making when it comes to vehicle type, clarifying challenges and opportunities related to EVs, and showcasing resources, policies, and programs that may help to accelerate EV adoption nationwide.

Authors: Nicole Lepre, Jaclyn Lea

U.S. EPA Phase 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles

9/1/2024

Heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) contribute 25% of the U.S. transportation sector’s emissions. To reduce these emissions numbers, on April 22, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published new greenhouse gas emissions standards for HDVs, requiring a 60% emission reduction per ton-mile of freight moved by up to 60% for vocational trucks and up to 40% for tractor trucks by 2032 compared with 2027 levels. This report details the projected benefits of the EPA’s ruling and highlights key elements of the plan, such as the emissions standards themselves, as well as finances, fuel use, electric vehicle battery logistics, and more.

Authors: Yihao Xie

Nationwide Port Emissions Screening for Berthed Vessels: Prioritizing U.S. Port Electrification to Improve Air Quality for Near-Port Communities

9/1/2024

Idling, at-berth marine vessels are a prominent source of greenhouse gas emissions. With the recent opening of port-specific federal funding, technological strategies, such as shore power, or plugging in and connecting at-berth marine vessels to the electrical grid, can not only aid in curbing these emissions, but can also improve local air quality for nearby communities. This report highlights specific ports where shore power is most readily applicable, and where it can have the greatest impact on air quality.

Authors: Tom Decker, Elise Sturrup

Hydrogen Policy's Narrow Path: Delusions & Solutions

8/27/2024

This report examines the growing hydrogen fuel industry within the U.S., providing key takeaways regarding hydrogen’s role in a clean economy, as well as a series of demand-side policy recommendations to boost hydrogen’s uptake in competitive areas, and its adoption in applications where hydrogen is less likely to compete with other alternative clean energy technologies. Where possible, the report offers technology-neutral policy recommendations to support a widescale expansion of hydrogen use. The report ultimately summarizes hydrogen’s use in 12 end-use sectors, detailing hydrogen’s emission reduction potential, infrastructure requirements, social impacts, and strengths and weaknesses.

Authors: Dan Esposito

En un coup d’oeil : les véhicules électriques (At A Glance: Electric Vehicles)

8/16/2024

Les véhicules électriques (VE) comprennent les véhicules entièrement électriques, également appelés véhicules électriques à batterie (VEB), et les véhicules électriques hybrides rechargeables (VEHR). Accéder à cette publication en anglais ici.

Impact of Electric Vehicle Charging Station Reliability, Resilience, and Location on Electric Vehicle Adoption

8/1/2024

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 directed $7.5 billion towards public electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. To ensure that this funding is utilized effectively, public EV chargers must be reliable. Following surveys that demonstrate buyers concern of public EV charging station reliability, this report examines the relationships between EV station reliability, station resilience, electric grid resilience, and EV adoption, synthesizing the impacts of each to determine what works and what does not work when it comes to EV charger development.

Authors: Bonnie Powell, Caley Johnson

Electric Residential Carshare Program Final Report and Replication Toolkit

8/1/2024

This report details an urban, transit-adjacent, and free electric carshare program exclusively for households in an affordable housing building in Salt Lake City, Utah. In it, key findings, a full review of the systems and hardware used, financial impacts, and a replication toolkit to aid interested entities in starting their own place-based, electric carshare program can be found. External links, resources and our own source code for data analysis are included at the end of the replication toolkit.

Electric Vehicle Standards – Grid Service Capabilities: Evaluation of IEEE 2030.13, SAE J3072, ISO 15118-2, ISO 15118-20, OCPP, IEC 61850-7-420, IEEE 2030.5, and OpenADR

7/14/2024

This report assesses various vehicle-grid-integration standards and evaluates each standard on its support for electric vehicles (EVs) to provide for or participate in distributed energy resource grid services. The report highlights challenges associated with the deployment of standards and offers context for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies and distributed energy resource (DER) strategies for EVs.

Authors: Francis K. Tuffner

Advancing NEVI: Recommendations from State NEVI Funding Applicants

7/1/2024

This report from the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) offers guidance to future applicants to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) funding program. NASEO uses information gleaned from candid, in-depth interviews of first-round NEVI awardees to offer seven key recommendations for future NEVI program leads. These recommendations focus on various aspects of the NEVI award process, including how to enhance proposal quality, streamline application reviews, and accelerate the deployment of NEVI-funded stations. The recommendations also come paired with action items to help applicants get their proposals off the ground.

Powering Progress: Advancing Transportation Electrification in Rural Southeastern Communities

7/1/2024

This report follows up on a 2022 Electrification Coalition report, Electric Vehicles (EVs) in Rural Communities, in addressing common roadblocks to transportation electrification in the rural, Southeast U.S. by providing case study examples of how communities have overcome these challenges. As rural communities are particularly susceptible to the effects of oil-dominated transportation systems, examples of successful electrification pathways are critical to wide-reaching EV deployment.

Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Trends from the Alternative Fueling Station Locator: Fourth Quarter 2023

7/1/2024

Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure continues to rapidly change and grow. Using data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator, this report provides a snapshot of the state of EV charging infrastructure in the United States in the fourth calendar quarter of 2023 by charging level, network, and location. Additionally, this report measures the current state of charging infrastructure compared with a federal infrastructure requirement scenario. This information is intended to help transportation planners, policymakers, researchers, infrastructure developers, and others understand the rapidly changing landscape of EV charging infrastructure. This is the sixteenth report in a series.

Authors: Brown, A.; Cappellucci, J.; Heinrich, A.; Cost, E.

Customer-Focused Key Performance Indicators for Electric Vehicle Charging

6/18/2024

Electric vehicles (EVs) are a rapidly growing portion of the light-duty vehicle market, but their sustained success is closely linked to the reliability and ease-of-use of public EV chargers. To mitigate issues such as long wait times, difficulties starting charging sessions, and slow charging speeds, this report recommends two sets of numerically defined key performance indicators (KPIs) based on customer pain points that will help streamline the transition to clean vehicles. These KPIs target the following: charger access, starting and completing a charge, and charger-related safety and comfort.

Authors: Casey Quinn; Sarah Cardinali; Jason Clifford; Kaleb Houck; Kristi Moriarty

Grid-Constrained Electric Vehicle Fast Charging Sites: Battery-Buffered Options

6/1/2024

America’s electric vehicle (EV) charging network is growing quickly, but many rural regions across the country experience electrical grid restraints that complicate the EV charger build-out. Government agencies must still devise strategies for deploying chargers in these locations where electrical grid capacity is more limited. This technical assistance case study provides guidance on battery-buffered options for EV charging sites with limited grid capacity, including infrastructure solutions, project economics, energy specification methods, technical considerations, and other relevant strategies.

Physical Safety and Security at Electric Vehicle Charging Sites

6/1/2024

As electric vehicle (EV) demand grows, so does the need for more robust EV charger safety and security. EV charger host sites must work to uplift driver and passenger confidence by incorporating design elements that promote greater safety and security. This help sheet outlines various best practices for public EV chargers. While the help sheet indicates the higher monetary costs attributed to greater safety and security measures, it also clarifies the greater repeat customers rates that result from these improvements.

Solar Power + Electric Vehicle Charging: Capturing Synergies in Minnesota

6/1/2024

A suite of aggressive climate action legislation, including a series of solar development commitments, has contributed to Minnesota reducing the carbon intensity of its power sector by 29% over 2013 levels. However, the carbon footprint of each sector has not dropped equally. In 2018, the transportation sector overtook power generation as the leading emissions producer statewide. The same focus on solar energy—combined with electric vehicle (EV) use—offers a vital opportunity for Minnesota to decrease transportation emissions. The analysis in this report examines the underdeveloped synthesis between solar production and EV charging, presenting seven key findings paired with relevant recommendations to transform the market and decrease transportation-based emissions.

Authors: Brian Ross; Katelyn Bocklund; Matthew Prorok; Dane McFarlane; Abby Finis